This article pretty much sums up the salient points – so there’s no need to repeat them. She’s totally right, but then we really didn’t need anyone tell us that what’s happening with this whole Sotto circus has reached ridiculous proportions.

As for the article being too hard on Enrile or Stantiago, I can understand the frustration that made her say the things she said. But for me, their statements may have stemmed from the simple fact that the context of which the content was delivered didn’t merit legal action – subjectively speaking, of course.

Context

The context of this speech was to simply give reasons why he personally took the stance he did – whether the reasons are his own or gleaned from other’s insights (obviously it was the latter). This is different from asserting an “expert opinion” on a matter – like if it was a trial and he was on the stand as an expert witness – in that case, people expect his words to be his own – as its supposed to be his “expert” opinion. This is also different from an academic setting where all submitted content are academic exercises to know if a person is capable of formulating/assetiong conclusions/opinions/positions themselves.

So in that, I’d cut Enrile and Santiago a little slack – perhaps they didn’t qualify their statements enough to please everyone. But I think they were coming from a reasonable place.

Real Underlying Problem

I think the problem is that the country has a culture of copycat-ism. And that lack of diligence to cross-Ts and dot-Is as far as intellectual and creative rights has made a lot of people very complacent, sometimes ignorant, or sometimes not entirely certain on these issues.

Take for example the entertainment industry. I’m not much of a TV person (ever since the Internet) but from what I remember (and see whenever I get the chance) an overwhelming majority of our “content” ¹ Or at least the content that is commercially pushed/marketed by the industry is not original [creative] content.

Take a look at our noontime shows; the format of having an entertainment show shown in a single block of time – with various segments comprising of performances, games, and comedy comes straight from the Japanese.

Now one can certainly argue that that definition of a show is too broad to accuse intellectual dishonesty should one end up having a similar implementation. It’s like the Apple Samsung debate; on the one hand there are a lot of things that seem “obvious” and would justify having similarities – but on the other hand there is a subjective line where you can just notice that it’s “too similar” – that it’s more likely that the idea/execution was simply copied and tweaked; rather than conceived independently and just so happens to be similar to “prior art.”

Take a look at our game-shows, of all the different games that are shown on TV wether standalone game shows (do we still have those?) or in-show game segments. I can only think of two truly original ones: Kwarta o Kahon and Pinoy Henyo. There may be more or variations, but the fact is that almost everything else has already been done in other countries.

How about the soap-operas, having soap-operas/telenovelas in and of themselves obviously isn’t an idea that should be “copyrgihted” – as it is a legitimate type of program which does have a specific market. But the stories that’s a whole different thing. Now I understand that we may have got more original material now (i.e. Santino, etc.) but shows like a filipino Ugly Betty

Then there’s the whole music scene (and I believe is the cause of the uproar on that “OPM is dead, so sue me” article. The fact of the matter is that while there is an truly original culture, as far as the mechanism that exposes content goes, we are more skewed to unoriginal content.

A simple explanation of this phenomenon (which was accurately pointed out by a friend of mine) is Marshal McLuhan’s phrase The medium is the message.

He said that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but also by the characteristics of the medium itself.

And the medium is the mechanism – which is not the “original” artists those who can be discovered by someone who takes the extra effort to look – but the artists that make it to, and pushed through, the mechanism/medium that counts; the Television (or/and the Internet for the 20th century)

Sotto-isms

Being aware of this culture explains a lot why Sotto thinks/acts the way he thinks; he was cultivated from an era where copycat-sim was their bread and butter. Just listen to Tito Vic and Joey’s album and you’ll hear them simply transplanting new words to an existing tune.

I’m guessing that the reason Sotto has such cognitive dissonance with the accusation of plagiarism is simply because he’s afraid that if he admits to the gravity of whatever “penalty” it may entail – that it might hurt him retroactively (i.e. grounds to go after them for not having original content ever since they were rising comedians, etc.)

But what he doesn’t realise (and is what I think Mrs. Santiago was trying to say) is that copying is not a mortal sin – and in fact the people know that themselves; take a look back from when this started – all we ever wanted was for him to just admit his mistake, ² Or better yet, simply cite his source and all will be forgiven – and we’d all be about our usual business – which does not involve him.

There’s nothing wrong with using existing text to drive a point home – especially if it’s wonderfully phrased. All one has to do simply cite the source. Steve Jobs liked to quote other luminaries – to the extent that their sayings are ingrained to Apple’s culture/DNA – those sayings are not Steve’s ideas for sure, but see how merely acknowledging it absolves him of being disingenuous.

Was it really difficult for Sotto to say “I read in an article…” – even something as ambiguous as that could’ve mitigated the gravity of the fallout. Sure, people still would probably want to nitpick specifics (which article, why did you not paraphrase, etc), but a statement as that still should give him a lot of leg-room to defend himself to a certain extent.

So the article is on the money with its title – it’s the dishonesty, stupid. The fact that you lifted text isn’t so much of the issue anymore – as you know as well as we do that we would’ve let it pass if you simply admitted (or had a disclaimer in the first place) that the words were not your own. The issue is the fact that you are being stubborn in insisting what you did was not copying/plagiarism – and that suddenly ups the ante on an ethical level.

Because of that, now the real issue is if people want someone in public office who is dishonest beyond any reasonable doubt.